It’s time for U.S. Olympic champions to return to Houston

Abby Wambach of the United States celebrates after a riveting victory over Japan in the women's soccer gold medal match at the 2012 London Olympics on Thursday. (Smiley N. Pool/Houston Chronicle)

Long before anybody in Houston thought of building a soccer-specific stadium on the East End, almost 17,000 showed up at Reliant Stadium to watch Mia Hamm, a young Abby Wambach and the U.S. Women’s National team play Ireland at Reliant Stadium in 2004.

I think the game would be a sellout, and so does Dynamo president Chris Canetti, who has been lobbying U.S. Soccer to get the women’s national team back to Houston. They have captivated America over the last two summers, finishing second at the 2011 Women’s World Cup against Japan before avenging that loss in the final of the London Olympics with a 2-1 victory today at Wembley Stadium.

“I could never have envisioned the kind of stadiums we’d fill, the World Cups and the Olympics that we’ve experienced,” Chastain told the talented and lovely Megan Manfull Ortiz of the Chronicle on Oct. 23, 2004. “And I am amazed at how the standard and the ceiling keeps raising and raising and raising. Because we had no expectation, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. When you don’t know what your limits are, you are bound to do good things. And this team has surely made its mark in that way.

“And I think because these young kids get a chance to see it. They understand that, ‘Why should anybody tell me what I can and can’t do? I’ll show you. I’ll go out there and do what it is I want.’ ”

For those of you who don’t know, Megan is my wife. On the phone that day she told me how much she wished our then-one-year-old daughter had been old enough to attend that game along with the thousands of other little Houston girls. I couldn’t attend because I was out of town covering the Red Sox-Cardinals World Series, but I would have been in attendance if I were home.

My girls are now 8, 5, and 3, and they proudly wear their U.S. national team replica jerseys each time the U.S. women or men play. They love Alex Morgan, Wambach and the rest of the women. Moreover, they love watching and playing soccer. They’ve already made me promise to take them to the 2015 Women’s World Cup in Canada.

In the meantime, it’s great to hear that Dynamo president Chris Canetti is trying to land a spot on the U.S. women’s national team victory tour.

“We have been courting U.S. Soccer for a long time trying to get a national team game at BBVA Compass Stadium,” Canetti told me. “Hopefully the circumstances will work out this fall as part of their victory tour.”